Her short fiction has been published in Delay Fiction, Wraparound South, the Leicester Writes 2019 Anthology and is due to feature in The Ogham Stone 2020. She has been shortlisted for the Retreat West First Chapters and the Words By Water Short Story awards and was longlisted for the Exeter and Leicester Writes short fiction prizes. Catherine is currently working on her first collection of short fiction.

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The Dublin Literary Pub Crawl

I try and stay away from patriotism for two reasons. Firstly, because she has an ugly sister called ‘nationalism’ and I want to give her a swift kick in the gee. Secondly, I think it’s a bit silly to be proud of the successes of other people that have feck all to do with you.

But despite all of this, I can’t help being very proud of the literary history of Ireland.

In fact, I’m verging on smug that so many great writers hail from this small island. It feels good to be able to walk the same streets they walked, to visit the places where they studied and honed their craft, and, most importantly, drink in the same pubs they drank in.

So, in a fit of patriotism, I decided to book two last-minute tickets for Dublin’s Literary Pub Crawl. What better way to indulge a totally undeserved sense of personal pride in the literary achievements of total strangers than a pub crawl? This tour has been on my ‘bucket list’ for the past few years and being a typical local, I kept putting it off. But I began to regret my decision to buy the tickets before securing a second person to accompany me.

Derek and Colm enacting a scene from Strumpet City

My mother is the biggest bookworm I know. She devours books at a phenomenal speed. In fact, she reads so much she’s like my book beefeater, she’ll read a book, give me a review and if she gives it the thumbs up I’ll read it. So, I thought the combination of literature and lushing would be enough to get her on board. When I mentioned that there would be a little bit of walking outdoors involved in she didn’t look impressed. Turns out she loves heat and shelter more than she loves books and booze. I feared that she was backing out, so I offered to buy her dinner. This was the clincher. Like mother, like daughter. Feed us and we’ll do anything. Even venture out on a cold Thursday in November.

We got a taxi to The Duke. No driving as we both planned on getting fully involved in the spirit(s) of the tour. We went upstairs and within minutes of having arrived, our tourguides, Derek and Colm, launched into a rousing old tune about drunken candle-makers, before popping on a pair of bowler hats and enacting a section of Waiting for Godot. I knew at that point, that it was going to be a good night.

I wasn’t surprised to learn that our guides are both actors and former history teachers. Not only that, but Colm is also a writer. He managed to fill an entire book with stories about Dublin’s writers and its pubs. An entire book! So, we couldn’t possibly drink in all the watering holes that the greats frequented or we’d be dead by pub number eight. Our guides had to choose the best of them and so we were limited to four.

Each pub we visited was patronised by at least one famous writer, and/or featured in their writings. Many of the greatest scenes in Irish literature are set in pubs. It’s not surprising to me that pubs are the source of much inspiration. They are fantastic places for people-watching, as after a few people tend to let their guard down. If you really want inspiration for characters in your book, I recommend visiting a few.

Between pubs the tour made various stops at places such as St. Andrew’s Church and Trinity College. Our guides shared trivia, quotes and anecdotes about famours writers, and enacted scenes from novels and plays. They covered most of the greats: Joyce, Beckett, Swift, Boland, Heaney, Behan etc. I absolutly adore Oscar Wilde. He led a very interesting life, so there were a few stories about him. The best was the one about him drinking a bunch of hardened American miners under the table after giving them a talk on art and aesthetics.

As well as sharing the literary history of the city, our guides also spoke about the social, economic and political history of Dublin. They told us about the birth of the city with the arrival of the Vikings up to the more recent history of the civil war.

There was a quiz at the end of the night which brought out a scary competitive side in my mother. Something I had never encountered before. I was grateful that she came second and won a little prize for herself. I don’t want to think about how she might have reacted to coming away empty-handed.

Mum after coming second in the trivia quiz, doesn’t she look happy?

The guides fit an incredible amount into a two-and-a-half hour tour. The great reviews are well-deserved. At €14 per person, it is very good value for something so entertaining.

Overall, it was a great night. I hope that in retracing the footsteps of some of the greats, some of their magic might just rub off on me.